


Coping Mechanisms

by completelyhopeless



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Comment Fic, Community: comment_fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 10:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2847854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint doesn't let anyone see him cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coping Mechanisms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



> For the prompt: _[Marvel Cinematic Universe, Clint Barton(/Natasha Romanoff) +/Bucky Barnes, You think I know anything about tears? Divergent, Veronica Roth](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/572854.html?thread=80103350#t80103350)_
> 
> So I was doing this to fix a fail fill from before where I did it all about Natasha and not about Clint. And then I was about to post this and saw that it is supposed to have Bucky in it.
> 
> Well... It's just gonna have to stay a fail fill because I can't write the real Bucky. Furball, yes, Winter Soldier no.

* * *

People said Clint wasn't a spy. That he couldn't pull off that kind of work. He was a sniper, an assassin, but he wasn't a spy. He wasn't a good enough liar. He smiled too much.  
Laughed too much.

He would have laughed at that, at least. He didn't know why people thought smiling and laughing was any less of a coping mechanism than the rest of it was. Some people went dark, got silent, got mean. He didn't. He pulled pranks. He joked. He laughed.

He didn't talk about his childhood or how he'd learned to shoot. He didn't talk about the things he'd done before he joined S.H.I.E.L.D.

And he never talked about his brother.

Those things were in the past. They were done and gone. He'd stopped crying when he was a kid.

Except that was a lie.

What he'd done to Barney, however right or justified or necessary it might have been, reduced him to tears after every nightmare, every flashback, every _memory._ He'd pull out a joke and laugh it off, find a prank to distract everyone, or he'd find some lone perch where no one could see the tears.

It was a coping mechanism, and he was damn good at making it work.

He didn't allow anyone to see him cry.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't decide if I should end this with the line: 
> 
>  
> 
> _Well, anyone other than Natasha._
> 
>  
> 
> or not. It might be shippy then, might not, and I couldn't say if it works.


End file.
